Last week, the N.C. attorney general’s office sent subpoenas to owners of 23 gas stations. Enforcing the state’s price-gouging law, the A.G.’s staff wanted to learn why those stations charged more than $5.35 per gallon for gasoline.
So $5.35 must be the demarcation line between a “reasonable” price and a price that “gouges,” right? Not necessarily. We now learn that three more gas stations face subpoenas because they charged between $4.49 and $5.35 per gallon.
As Roy Cordato has told us, the entire concept of price gouging necessarily involves arbitrary decisions about which prices are “reasonable” and which are “excessive”:
“It’s against the law charge ‘too much’ for gas ? whatever the government decides ‘too much’ means ? but it’s not
against the law to run out of gas and shut down your pumps,” Cordato
added. “Faced with that choice, why would a gas station owner take the
risk of running afoul of this arbitrary law?”
